You Can't Make Mistakes.

Is that “inshallah for real,” or “inshallah, it’s never going to happen?”

I recently stumbled upon this article about the possible induction of “inshallah” into the English as a side effect of the occupation of Iraq by the United States military. It seems that soldiers and evern high-level diplomats are now using this phrase—which is often misconstrued as a single word—as a part of their everyday speech.

What will come over us next?

I caught this article this week on Reuters. Apparently, it has become a bit of a problem in Jerusalem that while people are there visiting holy sites and relics, something comes over them, causing odd behavior, spontaneous preaching and the perceiving of visions of prophets and messiahs. This phenomenon has been termed “Jerusalem Syndrome.” However, this label is reserved for pilgrims who have no prior mental disorders. I will leave that completely alone.

The topic of religious experiences is an interesting one. William James argued that they were somehow simply a part of the human psychological structure. As humans, he said, we have mystical experiences as a normal part of our development. The degree to which this has an effect over an individual, of course, varies greatly from individual to individual.

I have always taken the stance, as a hardcore materialist, that these experiences are physio-neurological events which our brains cannot interpret rationally. Rather, when such an event occurs, we go outside the normal rational structure which we have developed since childhood and unconsciously search our minds for some explanation, which generally results in something which appears more like a dream rather than your average experience of external phenomena. Some part of the process confuses the interpreting mechanism in our brains and we interpret these events as though we are perceiving and processing sensory data from external sources.

Mamoon Yusaf, my friend and a London-based NLP coach, confirms that this perceptive shift is also possible to produce synthetically using tools of Neuro-Linguistic Programming. Since our perception of sensory data from external sources is actually processed by the same parts of our brain as our internal representations, human beings can actually alter their emotional and physiological state through simply meditating upon and reproducing visual, auditory, and kinesthetic cues in our minds. Conversely, when a human being alters his physiology—by, say, smiling—his internal representations will change considerably.

So, imagine this scenario: you go to Jerusalem. You carry a bunch of internal representations with you regarding feeling inspired by religious text, artifacts, sites. You walk into [insert place of religio-historical significance]. Your brain starts mulling over the fact that you are standing in the place where [insert important religio-historical event here] happened. You feel a sense of inspiration. Your body feels tingly or light, you head starts to swim a little bit. You begin to look around and imagine the places that [insert religio-historical figure here] stood, talked, laughed, spoke, performed a miracle, etc. These stories have a great deal of significance for you. You, standing in this place, seeing these things in your mind, contemplating the mysteries and significance of this event/place, have begun to confuse your perceptions of the world outside of your body with the vivid, emotionally charged pictures/sounds/feelings in your imagination. You are physically standing in a spot of religio-historical signifcance. You are emotionally seated in that place in your mind. At this point, for your brain and your body, your outer and inner perceptive mechanisms are the same, and you shift into that place/time.

This is the only explanation of “Jerusalem Syndrome” that makes any sense to me. We can argue about where the inspiration comes from or what has made these things significant to the point of causing a “mystical” experience, but that will tell us nothing. This would be an interesting topic to study with the help of neuro-psychologists and neuro-linguists. Perhaps I will conduct such a study in coming years. I believe that this model can be applied to my particular field of study—Sufism—though I feel like it would be pretty significant if we could find data that suggest a wider application of such a theory.

Fun times ahead for the scientific study of religious behavior! In the mean time, I hope that you all see Jesus, Buddha, one of the 99 names of Allah, or something spiritually significant to you on your toast, tomatoes, lambs, or fishsticks and have a good weekend.

It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks about anything anymore.

Though Benazir Bhutto came under a great deal of scrutiny during and after her two stints as Prime Minister of Pakistan, for corruption and for not fulfilling campaign promises, the fact still remains that she was the first woman to serve as Prime Minister in a Muslim country. As a resident of a country which prides itself on being modern and on the forefront of democratic systems of government, and yet has still not had a woman president, I find this to be a pretty decent accomplishment.

At the end of the day, it is really tragic. Her father was assassinated. She herself was imprisoned previously. None of the pro-women reforms that she attempted to make as Prime Minister were ever implemented because of political pressure from the rest of the government. Juan Cole likened the Bhutto family to the Kennedys in his article yesterday. It is a decent analogy. They Kennedys, for all their foibles, were symbols to Americans. In the same way, Benazir Bhutto was a symbol not just to Pakistanis, but to women, Muslims, and people living in politically and socially restrictive states the world over.

Unfortunately, Bhutto will not be remembered for anything that she did: good or ill. She will now only be remembered for having been killed by extremists, ironically as she once supported the advancement of another group of extremists in Afghanistan: the Taliban.

Whether you agree or disagree with Bhutto’s policy decisions 15 years ago, before a self-imposed exile from Pakistan, it is difficult to see her death as anything but tragic. Her untimely demise will be this month’s placard for the pigeon-holing of Muslims as extremists and terrorists. This is as bad as simply forgetting about the murder entirely. There is, however, little chance of this. Now, and for the immediate foreseeable future, her death will be used and abused by everyone from United States politicians to Pakistani party leaders to the men who plotted her murder for their own spin and manipulative plotting.

G-mail’s Security Failure affects the business of Graphic Designer

This week graphic designer David Airey’s Google E-mail account was hacked, which allowed for the hacker to hijack his primary domain name by performing an illegal transfer.

If this doesn’t mean anything to you, imagine this scenario: you go online at the computer in your home office to check your e-mail. Then you go to the store for some milk. When you return, your key doesn’t work and a real estate agent walks up your driveway offering to sell your own house back to you. You didn’t even know that you had put your house on the market. Then, when you attempt to take this real estate agent to court, you are told that it will cost you more than what they are demanding from you for your own stolen house.

What do you do?

Mr. Airey has refused to give in to the criminal who stole his domain. Thankfully he has a secondary domain, but that doesn’t mean that he isn’t losing business, money, and time.

Read his article here.

I felt a particular twinge of sympathy for Mr. Airey as I am currently living in Egypt and had trouble getting internet connection for the first three months that I was here. This could have just as easily happened to me. I never go to the internet cafés here because I have had friends here who have had their e-mail passwords hacked by the kids who work in hand hang out there. They seem to think that it is fun to fiddle with spyware and keylogger software to get passwords and phone numbers from people. This is fertile ground for the type of hack with which Airey was attacked.

Though unfortunate for Mr. Airey, this should be instructive to the rest of us.

1. When you check your G-mail, check your filters for hacks
2. If you own domain names, put extra security on them
3. Do not use public computers, and if you do, make sure that you have logged out of your e-mail and other accounts, and check them for anomalies
4. Be sure to make your passwords complicated, using numbers as well as upper and lower-case letters
5. Change your passwords frequently
6. Do not open links in your e-mail if you are not sure where or who they came from
7. Do not visit shady websites

The most important thing that you can do is be vigilant and not visit shady-looking websites. However, Airey did all of these things and was still hacked and had his time and money stolen.

If anyone has any experience with this sort of thing which can help Mr. Airey, please visit his site and e-mail him with any helpful suggestions. Spread this link around to your friends and make this sort of incident more widely known. Additionally, for G-mail users, e-mail your concern about this problem to Google.

Egypt style

My friend Mo’s family own a farm in the delta, near Damanhur, which they so graciously invited me to visit. I was thrilled because I had been wanting to see a farm here for some time. I love farms. Tilled earth and animals and and non-stop fun.

I was most excited to see how the irrigation works. Mo’s dad, Moataz, gave me an amazingly in-depth tour of the entire operation and showed us the whole irrigation system. It was truly fascinating.

The trade-off was that I had to ride a horse, which I hate, but was fun, regardless. I had a blast.

There is a podcast in the works from the audio that I collect on this day—which will include some videos of the pump and water-wheel in action. Stay tuned for that and in the mean time, enjoy these pictures.

I am never celebrating Christmas again.

This is the second year in a row in which I have spent the Christmas holiday essentially by myself. Last year, I was still sort of laid-up from having just had surgery, and didn’t feel like traveling. This year, of course, I am in Egypt.

Now—so that we are all on the same page—I don’t celebrate Christmas anyway. Years ago, as a child, I decided that I didn’t understand why we celebrated this holiday. My family isn’t religious at all, and I saw this a religious holiday. If you don’t think it is a religious holiday, go to a midnight mass. The other side of the holiday—the secular expression of consumerist glee—disgusts me. Not to mention that this holiday provides everyone who does celebrate it with a month-long nightmare of stress, fighting with relatives who think that they know better than you, generally rude and angry public behavior, and more!

When given all these data:

1. Non-religious family
2. Disgust for consumerism and wasteful behavior
3. Stress, patronizing family, hateful, anti-social behavior = negatives

I conclude:

• I shouldn’t partake in the celebration of this Holiday, because I will never be in the “spirit,” as they say.

I feel like this is a totally reasonable conclusion to reach. However, this holiday will be enforced regardless. I did partake in its celebration while my Grandmother was still alive, because it was her favorite holiday. However, after her passing two years ago, I have felt no obligation whatsoever. It feels great.

Last year I practically forgot. Being drugged up from surgery addles your brain a little bit. I was reminded because my parents and grandfather came to see me and we went out for Jewish Christmas. It was nice for a change. I had delicious Kosher spring rolls and mixed vegetables in spicy black bean sauce.

This year I did forget and had to be reminded that it was Christmas the next day by a Muslim friend. I had mused that it seemed really busy as we walked by a Coptic church.

We were on our way to a Chinese restaurant, where they played Christmas carols on a maniacal loop. I had fried rice and spicy seafood soup.

Ahhhh.

I hope that everyone enjoyed Christmas. I sure did.

Notice:

Also, there have been problems with the e-mail subscription feature, so some of you may not have been receiving updates. This has been fixed and you should now receive update notices without any trouble.

Yah, elves really exist. Seriously.

In this report on NPR’s All Things Considered this week, we learned that elves exist—in Iceland at least.

Icelandic Elves – All Things Considered

Merry Christmas, if you’re into that. Otherwise, I hope that everyone is having a nice Tuesday: I know I am.

Kolo sanna w ento tayebeen.

In this episode I go out and explore Alexandria on Eid ul-Adha and am met with some pretty exciting sights and sounds.

Click below to listen online or download.

[display_podcast]

Extras:

New Podcast Feed Address: podcast.youcantmakemistakes.com

New podcast web address: http://youcantmakemistakes.com

Music Credits:

“Lick It and Stick It” by the Gypsy Cab Company

If you haven’t been paying attention up until now, you had better start.

So this is not the post that I promised. The Friday feature is still in development phase and since I am putting the finishing touches on a paper right now, it wasn’t going to happen this weekend.

However, I am pleased to report, that my dear friend Scott Masson and the band Office are now on MTV.

That, ladies and gents, is a big leap forward for these guys. They were bound to make it, and now they are doing so.

You can see their progress by clicking on this link.

If you haven’t purchased their record, A Night at the Ritz, you can do so by clicking here.

And, if you are really up for some fun: watch the “Oh My” video on YouTube, or right here:

You can also learn more about OFFICE at their website: www.reachoffice.net.

Thanks for enjoying this along with me. I couldn’t be more proud of these folks. Raise your glass to them. Cheers.

Not an isolated incident after all

I heard from Amanda and Sarah in Alexandria the other day after they had read my last entry. They too had gone in search of an ibra which too them on a wild goose chase.

They ended up finding one at a tailor’s shop. In the mean time, however, they would find at the Fathallah only thread, sewing scissors, and sewing kits WITHOUT NEEDLES IN THEM. This is very confusing. At least their goose only led them around their neighborhood in Alexandria.

The End

Alhamdulillah, I had the last of my exams today and I am now free of TAFL in Alexandria. In a few weeks I will move to Cairo, inshallah. I am very excited about the change as I have been quite frustrated here. Things simply did not go as I expected, in any way. However, that is all behind us now. I am on to better things.

For the next few weeks I will be in Alexandria still, writing and working on my thesis. The break will be nice. There are very few students here who are staying through the break. A couple of of my Egyptian friends will be in town visiting family. Fun fun.

Stay Tuned

I have something exciting in store for you tomorrow. Be sure to check back. Then again, it may not be as exciting as all that. Only you can be the judge.